Vin Diesel in Talks to Star in Sony’s ‘Bloodshot’ Movie (Exclusive)

Vin Diesel is in talks to star in Sony’s “Bloodshot” movie based on the Valiant comic, TheWrap has learned.

Sony revealed it would be moving forward with its five-film shared universe plan for joint franchises based on the Valiant comic books “Harbinger” and “Bloodshot.”

“Bloodshot” is about a mortally wounded soldier resurrected with cutting-edge nanotechnology and tasked with rounding up superpowered outcasts known as “harbingers.” “Bloodshot” was created by Kevin Van Hook, Don Perlin and Bob Layton in 1992.

According to insiders, Sony and Wilson plan to follow in the footsteps of the recent success of “Logan” and “Deadpool” with an R-rated take on the comic adaptation that will be tonally and aesthetically influenced by high-concept, sci-fi blockbusters of the late ’80s including “Robocop,” “Terminator,” and “Total Recall.”

“Bloodshot” will be a return to Diesel’s roots — he launched to international fame as a hard-hitting action star in “xXx” and “Pitch Black” before locking into “The Fast and the Furious” series. Diesel was also 2017’s top-grossing actor at the box office. According to Forbes, Diesel topped the list with $1.6 billion in global ticketing receipts, thanks to the success of “xXx: The Return of Xander Cage” and “Fate of the Furious.”

Diesel is now locking down a superhero franchise to call his own — one that Sony is targeting as a hard-R, big-budget tentpole for 2019.

Valiant’s library is truly one of the great and as-yet untapped wells of intellectual property. The publisher’s bench of more than 2,000 superhero characters (with lifetime sales of more than 80 million copies) makes it the third largest library of superheroes behind Marvel and DC — and the only one not currently owned by a major conglomerate.